It began in the summer of Myungsoo’s fourth year in life.

Whilst frolicking in the grass alone, he’d discovered a swarming pile of ants in his backyard late one afternoon. Thrilled, he thundered into the house and informed his father of the sighting with a shrill and breathless voice.

Myungsoo didn’t expect his father to march out into the meadow with a handful of useless paper and a matchbox in hand. He had expected to lead the man by the tip top of his fingers to the miniature hill so they could marvel over it together.

Instead, his father lit up the papers and scorched away the poor creatures.

Myungsoo hadn’t meant to kill them.

He began to cry, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks. Pitiful sniffs and whimpers soon crescendoed to outright wails. Waves of remorse hit the small boy. It was his fault that the lives of thousands of ants would be extinguished.

Nothing his father said about putting an end to the ants’ invasion in their family kitchen could calm Myungsoo down.

The man heaved a sigh and took his son in his arms. “Look up, Myungsoo. Stop crying. Look at how pretty the fire is.” He sat his son down on his lap a few feet away from the burning ants and the tears away from the boy’s face.

Myungsoo soon quieted. It was his first time seeing fire up close. He hiccuped a few more times but the tears had ceased. Silently, he watched the flames flicker in the shades, mesmerized. In mere minutes it had devoured all the crawling creatures on the surface along with a patch of grass and some dandelions unlucky enough to be caught in its path. The flames torched holes into the papers and burst through them, reducing it all into nothing but smoke and ash.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

The son nodded, not saying a word. His father got up and doused away the smoking papers with a hose in case it lit up again.

. . .

When Myungsoo hit third grade, his father started to sneak him some pocket money, unbeknownst to his mother. The first things he purchased were a lighter, some matchboxes and a pack of birthday candles. Then, he returned home and made a beeline to his room.

Neither of his parents were home.

The colorful candles were the beginning. With the lighter, he lit one up and watched the flame shiver to life. It was hypnotizing how the blue at the wick merged to a golden yellow. Myungsoo grinned.

He felt like he had stolen a piece of the sun.

Smiling, he blew it away and relit it over and over again. When one candle shrunk to nothing, he tossed it in the trash and lit the next.

The elation he felt at the sight of fire never dimmed.

But still, Myungsoo yearned for more.

. . .

Before he knew it, autumn arrived in a pile of new fallen leaves from the neighbor’s plum tree. The leafy hill accumulated at the edges of his fence.  

One night, when his parents were out on an emergency, a restless Myungsoo stepped outside, a lighter in the pocket of his red-striped pajamas. He stepped near his fence.

After a few spluttering coughs from the dying lighter, he lit a brown, curled up leaf. The click of the lighter sent excitement buzzing in Myungsoo’s bloodstream. Despite almost toasting his fingers, his eyes glittered when the flames engulfed the leaf in midair and a breeze scattered its remains. He lit up leaf after leaf.

Eventually, Myungsoo bored of the short lived fires. He situated the leaves into a pile in the middle of the yard and threw the burning lighter at it. The small ember soon erupted into a crackling blaze the size of a campfire.

A rush of adrenaline pumped in his veins. It was the biggest fire he had dared to create.

Red and orange at the air. Its colors were intensified by the dark blanket of night and it seared into Myungsoo’s eyelids. The fire roared as it ravaged the leaves. Sparks flew.

They looked like dancing stars.

Myungsoo let out a breathless laugh and the crackling of the flames seemed to chuckle along with him. He inhaled the incense of charred leaves, a smile tugging at his lips. Smoke surged up to the sky, cords of gray writhing in the air. It slanted to the side as a gust of wind teased it.

In that moment, nothing else mattered. It was just him, the blaze of vermillion, and the lonely silver sky.

. . .

Myungsoo’s thirst to see flames blaze and consume elevated from there.

He began to search up videos online. He learned to create mini explosions and flamethrowers. He learned how to change the color of fire. Myungsoo experimented with pencils, ink, candy wrappers, everything he could get his hands on.

All of this he did in secret. After a close call when his mother found an ancient test paper with his name still on it, blackened and brittle, Myungsoo made sure to burn things outside of home. He often went to a vacant park at night while his parents slept to satisfy his desire to light something—anything—up.

He was in his first year of high school when they finally found out.

It was January.

His mother and father were submerged in their dreams once again.

By then, Myungsoo had developed a fondness for cigarettes. He loved watching the end glow softly when he inhaled. He loved the taste of the smoke, how it felt when he brought it down to his lungs, how it looked when he released it into the air.

He guarded the secret well but ultimately, the assistant principal caught him at lunch break and tattled to his parents.

They were shocked. Well, his mother was shocked; his father, not so much. The latter used to stir up all sorts of trouble when he was a teenager so he understood.

Myungsoo’s mother scolded him. She snatched away his pocket money and confiscated his classic zippo lighter. He’d received it from an artistic girl who fancied him and knew he liked to smoke. She confessed with the black zippo she’d decorated with a picture of a ball of fire. Though Myungsoo rejected her, he took the gift. Of course he had plenty more lighters but this one was his favorite.

His mother had ordered him to his room.

With clenched fists and gritted teeth, Myungsoo complied.

Five hours later, when the clock had ticked past midnight, he was still awake and feeling distraught. In just a day, the control he had over his life lessened.

Sitting on his bed staring out the window, he itched to light something up. Something that would last awhile. Something big.

Something, Myungsoo thought as his eyes slid across his backyard, like the abandoned Christmas tree in the backyard.

Grinning, he pocketed a spare lighter. His heart thundered with anticipation as he tiptoed downstairs and left the house. Without an ounce of hesitation, Myungsoo closed the distance between him and the tree. His feet crunched on frozen grass and the wind bit fiercely at his face and hands. It was chilly but he didn’t feel it. Trepidation kept his body temperature warm.

He flicked the striker wheel.

Obediently, the fire leapt up. Myungsoo smiled and placed it under a low branch. When enough frost had melted away for the green to light, he repeated the action on the opposite side. Once he was content, Myungsoo stepped back to admire.

The tree did not disappoint.

In moments, the two flames consolidated into one. The starved inferno ate away at the tree. In the middle section, the brilliant yellow darkened to brown.

With an abundance of fascination, Myungsoo watched as the thin branches coiled inwards, parched. The uprooted plant shrunk in size as the top branches burned off. Soon enough, the whole thing toppled over to its side, too weak to support itself.

Myungsoo found himself slightly at the sight.

When he first lit the tree, the fire illuminated the grass like a weak lamp. Halfway through, it dimmed to an overcast red.

It took less than four minutes for the tree to surrender everything but its trunk.

More importantly, it took less than twenty minutes for a fire truck to come wailing to his house.

. . .

Since the incident, Myungsoo’s parents became overly wary of him. However, no matter how much they tried, they couldn’t separate him from fire.

“I will leave this house,” were the words he would always utter when his mother expressed her worry about his obsession. The latter didn’t doubt him; what Myungsoo said, he would do.

Later, he was diagnosed as a pyromaniac in his third year of high school, much to his mother’s horror. His father was much more accepting but still agreed when his wife suggested they send Myungsoo to anger management class. They heard it would help keep Myungsoo’s urges under control.

It didn’t.

He wasn’t angry. There was nothing to “manage.”

If anything, his lust to see flames increased even more. Soon enough, Myungsoo no longer cared if others knew of his pyromania or not. He lit several school chairs and desks on fire on days where he felt stressed and could no longer curb his addiction. He was expelled from two schools and suspended in the last one.

Girls still liked him though. Over the years, Myungsoo was gifted with the face of an angel. He had eyes that held a laser-like intensity, a fine nose and thin, pink lips that sent females swooning like flowers in the wind when he smirked. They believed he was dangerous (with good reason) and loved it.

And it wasn’t like none of the girls interested him—but Myungsoo was preoccupied after school. He didn’t have the time for such trivial matters.

Guys, on the other hand, stayed clear away from him. They didn’t bully him but they didn’t talk to him either.

Thus, Myungsoo graduated high school with no one to call a close friend.

The only person who came close was his homeroom teacher, Mr. Pyo. He was the only one who spoke to Myungsoo without the vigilant glint in his eyes but he really only nagged.

“Oh, Myungsoo, you should learn to do this and not that. Don’t you want to be successful?”

The student soon developed a strong distaste for the man. The more he looked at his beady eyes, short stature and beer belly, the more he hated the teacher. The more he listened to his nasally voice, the more he detested the man’s existence. This was before his mother used sugarcoated words and some hundred dollar bills to encourage the old man to “keep an eye out for Myungsoo and steer him away from trouble.”

Too bad trouble loved Myungsoo like lungs loved air.

Sick of Mr. Pyo’s hovering presence, Myungsoo felt free when he finally graduated. His mother though, had other plans.

But now what? He wondered a day after the ceremony. What was he supposed to do with his life? His parents urged him to study hard and enter a college or university but that was the last thing he wanted to do.

After a while, they couldn’t peel him away from his dank room. His mother nagged and nagged.

“I asked Mr. Pyo to come by again. He said there’s a college that’ll still accept you. Let’s apply.”

“No,” Myungsoo would growl. “Screw college. I’m done with school.”

“But Mr. Pyo–”

“I don’t care.”

“But he–”

“Get out, Mom!”

Everyday, it was the same thing. Like a broken record, Myungsoo’s mother would flip the lights on his room every afternoon and urge him to go to college. Mr. Pyo came by three more times in the same month.

Eventually, a sick and tired Myungsoo emerged from his room. It was nighttime then. His parents were eating dinner and despite their protests, he ignored them and walked out the door.

There was a match box hidden underneath the curve of his fingers.

He was headed in the direction of Mr. Pyo's house.

A/N:

Suzy will appear soon.